Reality Begins to Blur
by alaricnomad
Summary: LucasPeyton. Set at an undesignated time after S3 finale. Another year, another night, another party on the beach. A dance, an embrace, that blurs the lines of reality as he knows and leaves him longing for more. ONESHOT.


**Reality Begins to Blur**

By Alaricnomad

Another year, another summer night, another party at the beach house. The temperature is hot and stifling in the balmy humidity and the air reverberates with the heavy bass pulsating through the speakers, the beach illuminated by dozens of Japanese lanterns strung up from tent poles stuck in the sand.

As he swims, gliding through the water in long, powerful strokes, he is purposeful in the deliberate distance he keeps from the long stretches of writhing, grinding bodies dancing, or those stumbling about drunkenly, or those mingling and flirting who ended up in heaps of naked skin entwined on the sands.

He emerges from the water, the khaki material of his shorts clinging close as he wades through the shallows, intent on shore. He grabs a nearby towel, not caring whose as long as it is dry, draping it around his neck as he walks up the beach. He is already regretting the end of his solitude as a slender figure, outfitted in a bikini that could kill, runs toward him.

He knows the approaching figure to be his girlfriend, and he tried to attribute his lack of physical anticipation to the lingering cold of the water, but something inside him rejects the idea with cynical certainty, though he chooses not to pay attention.

His arms are full of Brooke the moment she is within distance to leap inside him, and the kiss that follows is hot and smothering and uncomfortable in a way he couldn't quite understand, and her hand running over him don't seem to caress but rather stake a claim, sliding over his damp skin, his chest and shoulders and back. He tastes the alcohol on her and his brows knit with distaste as she finally pulls back, and glances over his shoulder.

He sees a calculating look in her eyes, a smug smile playing over her lips, and he feels the weight of eyes on him, turning to meet a painfully familiar gaze. Peyton.

Hazel-green eyes flicker with hurt before her face falls into a nonchalant expression, too proud to turn away as she continued to look at them…_him_. Her eyes on solely on him now, and he is struck by a sudden, tactile memory.

The remembrance of different hands on him, gentle and caressing instead of rough and possessive, soft skin gliding against his. He remembered what it was for her to touch him, to touch her in return. To know that from his very first time, all things of a carnal nature he had ever experienced, only with the exception of the feel of her, had meant nothing at all, was a painful realization. How long had he wondered what it meant to really make love…to make love to her?

Her eyes were still on him, and he felt Brooke's looking at him now as well, angry and glaring, challenging what he would dare to do next. An ache in his heart only felt all the more poignant at that moment, as he thought of Brooke's strange orders to stay away from her former best friend, Peyton's self-imposed distance from him over the past few weeks, the longing to see her again that filled every time he caught a flash of blond hair or the sound of familiar rock music, every time he saw her face on the web-cam.

He only spared Brooke a glance as he lifted her hands off him, throwing a single comment over his shoulder as he started across the beach.

"It's not fair, you know, asking me to stay away from her. That's impossible, Brooke."

Peyton was no longer looking his way as he made his way toward her, and she jumped as he carefully placed a hand against her arm, the liquid in the cup she held sloshing over and then dropping completely as she whirled around to face him, a hand over her breast.

"L-lucas, what the hell?"

He smiled at her wryly, retracting his hand to stuff both in the pockets of his shorts. "Hey," he said simply.

She returned the smile, but didn't quite relax, radiating a strange tension that seemed to envelop her every time she was in his presence. His smile faded a little, but he didn't retreat, and as a feeling of tongue-tied awkwardness overwhelmed him, it was all he could do to hold out his hand and smile shyly.

The D.J. was finally at his table, for perhaps the first time that night not relying on a CD changer, and with a drink in his hand and a girl at each shoulder, he switched over to something slower, smoother, and Lucas could only think of one thing to say.

"Dance with me."

She looked up at him, her eyes hazy in the pallid luminescence reflecting from the bonfire, and she accepted his hand, moving with him to the space designated as the dance floor. And they come together, not in the way they have collided occasion after occasion in some forceful twist of fate, but a smooth, fluid gesture as he pulls her to him, her body fitting seamlessly to his.

They moved together, mimicking the movements everyone picks up on sometime or another, learning to slow dance, and her head rested against the crook of his neck, his arms around her waist, her hands gliding up his back, sleek, damp skin a forbidden, delicious indulgence beneath her fingertips, coming to rest at his broad shoulders.

There was a heat between them, dizzy and blinding, almost surreal as it embraced them both with welcoming arms, overtaking any sense of reality that took precedence in their minds. He pressed a kiss to the junction between her neck and shoulder, trailing his lips lightly down the sharp definition of her collarbone, and he felt her shudder under his touch, shift just a little closer.

He breathed in the scent of her perfume, not the heavy floral type Brooke seemed to prefer, but a subtle, light fragrance, a mild mixture of spice and sweet that fit her personality so well. Heat, so much heat, the feel of her body pressed flush against his, the rhythmic movement of her hips as they swayed to the music, the delicate way her thick lashes fell like spider's silk against porcelain skin as she closed her eyes.

Peyton, Peyton. So much heat, just heat and Peyton. His head felt dizzy, as if he was still in the ocean, under the water where the world was submerged in soundless dark, and his breath was not coming freely, panting and hot, and his heart was thundered, reverberating so loud in his chest he was sure she would hear it.

"Luke," she whispered in his ear, lightly brushing her lips against the lobe, and the sound of his name spoken so softly, so intimately, almost sends his world topsy-turvy as he fills with a strange sensation that almost sends him reeling in its intensity.

He knows this feeling. He's felt it for her before.

"Yeah?"

She draws back a little from their close embrace, looking him warily in the eye. His heart breaks at the realization that he was the one who had caused this new caution in her over the past few weeks, this odd vulnerability she couldn't quite hide. And then she smiles, and her eyes warm, and it's all he can do from kissing her then and there.

But it's been a long time since he saw that smile, so he only shyly returns it, and draws her close, finishing the dance. They didn't dare to say another word.


End file.
